Facebook is no monopoly, Zuckerberg tells MEPs in Brussels
MARK Zuckerberg has denied allegations from MEPs that Facebook is operating a monopoly, insisting that the social network faces plenty of competition and has helped business across the world to grow.
The Facebook founder was quizzed on his competitors during a grilling in front of European leaders in Brussels yesterday evening.
The 34-year-old billionaire had struggled to name a direct rival when questioned by US senators last month, but told MEPs in Brussels that “we exist in a very competitive space”.
“From where I sit, it feels like there are new competitors coming up every day,” he said in response to questions about whether Facebook should be broken up.
Facebook takes up 6pc of global advertising spend, which gives people “a lot of choice,” he said. He also said Facebook had been good for competition more broadly, allowing smaller businesses to grow by letting them advertise to audiences that had previously been available only to large companies.
“Around the world there are 70 million businesses that use Facebook tools to grow and reach customers, and in Europe alone there are 18 million; half of them have told us that they are hiring more people because they are using our tools.
“It is important not to lose track of, when you are thinking about competition, that there is the element of the internet and advertising space but there is the extremely pro-competitive effect to enable the companies access to the tools that previously only large businesses had the means to do,” he said.
His statement attempted to distance Facebook from the antitrust cases that have afflicted Microsoft and more recently Google in the EU.
Microsoft was fined €561m in 2013 for failing to promote rival web browsers while Google was last year ordered to pay €2.4bn for abusing its internet search monopoly to promote its shopping service.
Europe has historically been much stricter on competition matters than US politicians.
Yesterday’s hearing, which came two months after the Cambridge Analytica scandal emerged, lasted less than an hour and a half. In an unusual format, each member of the conference was given several minutes to ask questions with Mr Zuckerberg given a restricted time at the end to answer them in no particular order. (Daily Telegraph, London)